


giving the people what they want: the podcast

by knlalla, uselessphillie



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Bad Jokes, Banter, Dialogue-Only, M/M, Podcast, authors who refuse to apologize for the quality of the jokes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-03-11
Packaged: 2019-10-24 06:00:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17698967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knlalla/pseuds/knlalla, https://archiveofourown.org/users/uselessphillie/pseuds/uselessphillie
Summary: So like, Dan and Phil in 2019, what’s that about, right? Still just trying to give the people what they want. And apparently they want a podcast.





	1. The Stars Said WHAT??? (Reading Our Birth Charts)

**Author's Note:**

> katie is writing for dan in **bold**  
>  rose is writing for phil in _italics_
> 
> updates weekly (ish) on mondays

_ Hello, DanAndPhilPODCAST...stars! _

**Phil, no.**

_ What? _

**We’re not doing that, you’re not gonna start every episode of this by naming the audience and you’re** **definitely** **not gonna say it all weird and slow like that.**

_ I didn’t say it weird and slow! And -  _

**You did.**

_ \- and it’s nice to name our listeners. Makes them feel included, like they’re all part of some bigger...constellation, perhaps some kind of solar system... _

**You’re spoiling it.**

_ I’m spoiling it. Anyway, we have a podcast! _

**We do. So like, Dan and Phil in 2019, what’s that about, right? Still just trying to give the people what they want. And apparently they want a podcast.**

_ Yeah! _

**Long form content, lots of bants, irrelevant waffle…**

_ Maybe it won’t all be irrelevant, though. Maybe we could learn some stuff along the way! _

**Like we’re learning stuff about ourselves today, good transition, Phil.**

_ Thank you! We are gonna learn about ourselves today, because we’re starting out this podcast series by taking a little peak at our birth charts.  _

**Yeah. Now look. Look. I had like, basically no idea what this was until like, four hours ago. This was all Phil’s idea.**

_ It was. Well, people have been tweeting this at me for ages, and I just finally got around to looking it up.  _

**In other words, Phil’s known what this was for like, five hours.**

_ No! We were talking a few weeks ago about like, ideas for the podcast, and I said that we should start with this because it was really heavily requested. And plus it’s like a little, you know, Get To Know Dan and Phil segment, in case people haven’t watched us before. _

**Turn back now, honestly, if that’s the case.**

_ Shut up, don’t do that. It’s gonna be great. So I starting have a little sniff around the internet about like, star signs, because I already knew that I’m an Aquarius and Dan’s a Gemini. And I thought I would put together a little thing about what that means about our personalities, our habits, whether or not we annoy each other as flatmates - _

**Spoiler alert, we do. It’s terrible.**

_ It is. But then like, I got totally sucked into reading about this stuff because there’s so much more than I thought there was! _

**It’s really - I didn’t see you for like, three days, because you were just holed up in the office ass-deep in some star forum.**

_ Yeah. It was bad. And I’m still not an expert by any means, so like, there’s your disclaimer. But I printed a bunch of stuff out for us to go over.         _

**You really did. Phil killed so many trees, you guys. Many trees were ruined in the making of this podcast.**

_ It’s fine. I’ll go plant some trees in a field this weekend, that can be the next episode. _

**Sure, okay.**

_ So whose do you want to do first? _

**Yours, obviously, I’m not gonna sit here and be subject to some kind of celestial psychoanalysis when I’ve no idea what’s even going on.**

_ Fine, we’ll do me first. So my birthday is January 30th, which makes me an Aquarius. And I decided that it’s fitting because the symbol, or I guess the constellation, is like these two squiggly lines? And that’s how I feel on the inside. _

**It sort of looks like some really pathetic spaghetti. LIke two strands that snekked their way out of the colander and are just having a lie down in the sink instead.**

_ Dan! It’s not like that at all.  _

**No, it’s fine, it’s just saying that you’re a very wobbly person, which is true.**

_ I don’t think that’s what it’s saying. So the first thing I looked up was just ‘general Aquarius traits.’ And it said that Aquarius men are unpredictable, intelligent, social, independent, and excellent communicators.  _

**Social? You can’t say that, it’s against our branding, Phil. We just had an entire stage show devoted to how introverted we are. I have to agree with unpredictable, though.**

_ Unpredictable in a good way!  _

**How is it in a good way if I end up awake at eight in the morning because you got the sudden urge to play Ariana Grande on full blast to ‘help you wake up’?**

_ You love Ariana. Don’t tell me she’s not a positive influence in your life.  _

**Well there sure as hell aren’t any other positive influences in this apartment, so -**

_ Hey! _

**\- so I guess she can stay.**

_ She’s basically our third flatmate. But Dan, it also says that I’m indecisive, which is, uh, maybe a little bit accurate. Do you think? _

**Oh, like last week when we had to spend an entire hour deciding what takeaway to get? Because you couldn’t pick between Indian and Chinese? No, can’t imagine you as indecisive, Phil.**

_ That was an incredibly important decision, it’s only right that I should devote so much time to it.  _

**It would’ve been even longer if I didn’t make you flip a coin. What else does the star thing say, besides that you’re a terror to live with?**

_ So basically there’s a chart that tells you where all the planets were at the time you were born, and that will reveal to us all the magical and flawless aspects of my personality. _

**Okay, the science of the planets sounds cool but somehow I’m doubting it has any impact on, like, how you were raised. How you act. Your entire personality. I mean, I know Uranus has some impacts on your personality, but…**

_ Stop it. I’m banning Uranus jokes from the podcast right now.  _

**Oh Philly, you can ban Uranus jokes from the podcast but you can’t ban them from the rest of my life, you’ll be hearing Uranus in the middle of the night for - oh god okay, no, let’s move on. Planets.**

_ Planets. Is the sun a planet? Or is it just, like, the sun? _

**It’s a star you idiot, literally like five year olds know this.**

_ Oh, whatever. I’m not a planet-ist. I was just asking because the first thing I think we should discuss is the sun sign. _

**Right, sun sign, okay, hit us with those factorinos, Phil. What’s that mean and why’s it important in this science that isn’t really science?**

_ It means that this is the image, the vibe that I put out into the world.  _

**Okay, so ‘weird ex-emo’ should be right there on the page, yeah? Is it gonna predict your bizarre hand thing, too? Sorry, sorry, go on.**

_ Actually, it says that I aim to free myself of social conditioning. So society should just stop pressuring me into doing ‘normal’ things with my hands!  _

**Right, yes Phil, break free from societal norms! Okay, yeah, I can get behind that. I mean, I’ll still pressure you to do normal things with your - never mind. Move on, let’s move on. Social conditioning, what do you think, then?**

_ I mean, I’ve never been someone who does things the usual way, you know? Try new things, and all that. Different solutions.  _

**No that’s very accurate, actually.**

_ See, it’s real science! _

**It’s not ‘real science,’ it just got lucky. I mean, social, Phil, it said you were social. You can’t predict personalities based on planets, they’re not related literally at all.**

_ Just wait til we get to yours, Dan. I had a little peek at it and I think you’ll be surprised.  _

**Right, yeah, sure, okay. Let’s move on, you’re a social nerd who does things his own way, what else did the planets say?**

_ Okay, the next one is my moon in Aquarius, and my sun was in Aquarius as well, I don’t think I said that.  _

**You’re just a squiggly boy all over aren’t you.**

_ That’s what makes me so interesting! Who doesn’t like a good squiggle? _

**Ugh, okay, let’s talk about something else.**

_ So just like how the sun is what you look like from the outside, the moon is how you feel on the inside. And it’s not squiggly.   _

**Ooh, not squiggly, how mysterious. The moon isn’t a planet either, just want to continue to tear apart this pseudoscience. But please, go on, not squiggly?**

_ Maybe the moon feels like a planet on the inside.  _

**Okay, to be fair, Pluto’s ‘not a planet’ but it’s definitely still a planet. Not sure the moon counts, but if it wants to be a planet on the inside, I guess never stop chasing your dreams or something?**

_ Exactly. So! The science says that when you have an Aquarius moon, it means you’re very observant. _

**Pseudoscience, see! That couldn’t be more wrong. Not only are your eyes broken, but you literally don’t notice anything.**

_ That’s not true! Maybe I’m just picky about the kinds of things I observe.  _

**What was the last thing you actually observed, or like, noticed? You let a spider crawl around our flat for twenty minutes even though it was massive and black and very, very noticeable!**

_ I was just observing what the optimal time would be to trap him under a cup. Which was an incredible success, I’d like to add.  _

**Only after I shouted at you to do something! Jesus christ, this isn’t even - get back to the squiggly thing. So far I’m hearing ‘social’ and ‘observant’ and the only thing it’s gotten right is your uniqueness.**

_ Okay, the last squiggly boy in my chart is Mercury, which I’m at least 90% sure is maybe, definitely a planet.  _

**Yes, Phil, Mercury is a planet. Closest one to the sun, actually.**

_ Someone did A-level space geography. Anyway, let me read you this sentence and you can say whether or not you think it’s true. “When Mercury is in Aquarius, he is not necessarily loud or flamboyant, but he has a quiet way of stirring others up.” _

**‘Quiet,’ is that what we’re calling moving the phone charger? Or eating all my cereal? Leaving socks everywhere? And blankets, and all your crap? I swear I just tripped over a tiny figurine this morning, it was - was it a bulbasaur or something? Why did you leave it in the lounge? What could you possibly have been doing with a tiny Pokémon in the lounge?**

_ Now that sounds like a spoiler for a future episode of the DanAndPhilPODCAST. _

**I don’t even want to know what I’m going to be subjected to. If you’re listening, save me.**

_ You’ll love it. A bulbasaur is always a good time.  _

**Oh, no, don’t say that. Don’t ruin Pokémon.**

_ I’ll ruin whatever I like, it’s my podcast. _

**It’s our podcast, DanAndPhilPODCAST. Right in the name. And you won’t ‘ruin’ anything, god, what - what were we even supposed to be talking about? Fake science? Astrology? Planets? Your squiggly everything?**

_ There’s no more squiggly things. And I dare you to find a way to disprove the next planet, definitely a planet, which is Venus.  _

**Right, what does Venus say?**

_ She says only things that are true. That I’m warm-hearted, lovable, and sweet-tempered. And you can’t say otherwise or else everyone in the comments will fight you for the rest of eternity.  _

**Yes, Phil is the most kind, gentle, sweet, and lovable person on the planet! We all stan Phil, perfect angel bean. You really, really, really live up to that all the time, always.**

_ You’re only saying that because the microphones are on. And because science is true and correct. But here’s something about you, Dan, it says that you don’t need to be refined, polished, or graceful to win my favor. So it makes sense that I can put up with you, see! _

**Oh wow, thanks Phil...glad you can ‘put up’ with me...best friends and soulmates. He can ‘put up’ with me, guys.**

_ Ugh, this is getting too sappy. Shall we jump straight to Uranus? _

**Oh so you’re allowed to make Uranus jokes, I see how it is. Phil likes Uranus, guys. What does Uranus say about you, Phil?**

_ This was a mistake. _

**You’re the one who wanted us to read our star charts, I’m just here cause it’s the DanAndPhilPODCAST. Come on, everyone’s waiting for Uranus!**

_ It says “sometimes blunt and irritable.” Dan, you’ve got to edit this bit out, come on! _

**Edit - Phil, you could not convince me to edit this out if my literal life depended on it. No, we’re keeping that in.**

_ I’m quitting the podcast. _

**But wait, we haven’t even gotten to talking about my Uranus yet! Phil’s Uranus is blunt and irritable, guys.**

_ Yeah, good idea Dan, I think we should move on to your chart. I’m tired of being bullied on my own show. _

**Our show, but fine. Alright, hand over the paper, what’s my fake science planetary alignment say about me.**

_ Um, no, I’m not letting you read it. _

**What - no, no, I’ll pretend it’s real, let me -**

_ No, give it back! I did all the research, I’ve got my glasses on, I’m the scientist today.  _

**Ugh, fine, fine, you’re the ‘scientist’ today, sure. What’s my Uranus saying about me?**

_ We’ll get there. First of all, Dan, you’re a Gemini. Which is less exciting than being a squiggle, if you ask me. _

**Yeah, I’m like the twins or whatever?**

_ Hang on, the symbol just looks like two I’s smushed together! It’s Interactive Introverts Part Two, guys! _

**Oh my god, can you believe astrology predicted Interactive Introverts? I was literally born to do that stage show. I** **am** **Interactive Introverts. Hit us with that science, Phil.**

_ It says that Gemini represents two different personalities in one, and that you’ll never be sure which one you face. Ooh, that needs a dramatic sound effect for sure.  _

**I’m two-face. Batman villain. But honestly, am I really just two different personalities? I feel like I have at least seven, minimum. It’s like a game of roulette when I wake up, who am I gonna be?**

_ Ooh, that’s deep. But they’re all still just Dan, though.  _

**I mean, yeah, I’m still just me. Or am I? Now there’s your dramatic sound effect. Okay, so planets predicted I’d be an Interactive Introvert and they predicted my identity issues. What else?**

_ What else, let’s see... _

**I can’t believe you won’t even let me look at the paper. Literally, guys, he’s hiding it, like I can’t even see.**

_ You’re the patient here, you don’t get to look at the records. I’m diagnosing you with Gemini disease. _

**Sounds serious, how long do I have?**

_ Maybe if you have seven personalities, you also have seven lives. Like a weird cat.  _

**Seven lives is way too long, could you imagine living seven times the normal human lifespan? Jesus christ, existence is bad enough, I can’t do that for seven hundred years. Seven hundred, that’s like...**

_ Okay, I think we’re getting off track. Although it does say that you’re a very restless person, so really, do go on. You’re just proving my point.  _

**No, no, I’m not letting your fake science pin me. Are we getting to Uranus yet? I’m - I can’t even say it with a straight face. Just - ugh, let’s move on.**

_ Wanna hear about you sun? The face you put on for the rest of the world? _

**Aren’t I always putting on a face? What’s even behind the facade? Okay, yeah, yes, tell me what the sun thinks, because suns have sentience and future-telling powers.**

_ The sun thinks that your urge for self-expression is very strong, and that you’re curious to a fault. It also says here that you have ‘a finger in every pie’? Gross, Dan. _

**Okay, see, Phil’s literally just making shit up he knows is accurate, that’s why he’s not letting me see the page! And what can I say, I like having my fingers in things. All sorts of things, if ya catch my drift.**

_ Stop.  _

**What, too much fake science for you, Phil? You’re the one saying it’s all true!**

_ It is true, at least that part is! And I’m not making it up, any one of our followers could go look up our birth charts and analyze us. We literally put the exact times we were born in TABINOF, so it’s hyper-accurate.  _

**Okay, fine, I suppose you have a point. About the accuracy of when we were born, not the accuracy of astrology. But yes, self-expression is very important to me, I’ll give you that. See? I can play fake science.**

_ Are you getting to express yourself here on the podcast, or do we have to wait for Dani Snot On Fire to return to see one of your true selves? _

**Oi, shut it. Yes, I’m expressing one of my many personalities, and that personality is feeling very attacked right now. I did not come on this show to be dragged through my past cringe, okay.**

_ Okay, I’m sorry. Do you want to be distracted with an interesting fact? _

**Do I? What - yeah, y’know what, sure. Fact me, Phil.**

_ So my, uh, let’s see, my Sun, Moon, and Mercury were all in Aquarius, and your same three are all in Gemini. Is that weird, that they’re the same like that? _

**I have no idea, Phil. You’re the ‘scientist’. But I guess it does seem a bit unusual? I don’t know anything about this stuff, okay.**

_ It’s a perfect cosmic coincidence. They’ll write about us in science textbooks in the future.  _

**Astrology isn’t real science but I have no doubt they’ll dissect you anyway, don’t worry.**

_ Eugh, we shouldn’t talk about dissection on the podcast, it’ll get demontized.  _

**They don’t demonetize for that, it’s - we’re not talking about anything bad! If anything, it’ll be Uranus that gets us demonetized.**

_ You’re right. But we need Uranus, it’s what everything is building up to here. _

**Ah, god, this is getting worse and worse. Okay, so we did, what, my sun? What’s my moon, also Gemini? And what the hell does that mean? We’re getting so off topic.**

_ That’s the DanAndPhilPODCAST branding. Or just the Dan and Phil branding, probably. Anyway, remember that your moon represents your emotions, your inner mood. _

**So it’s just black. A black hole. Reflection of my soul or something?**

_ No. Although it does say that you may need more...stimulation than others. Do you want to comment on that? _

**No, I think I’ll just leave that one open for interpretation. Alright, what’s next?**

_ Hang on, it says that “you may pay too much attention to what everyone else is doing, and lose touch with what you really want to do.” That’s deep.  _

**Shut up, it doesn’t say that, let me see.**

_ Fine, see for yourself. The stars have really got you cornered there, Dan. _

**Oh, bullshit. Fine, it’s got a few things right. I still don’t see how this is science. It’s hand-wiggly guessing at best.**

_ I don’t know, Dan. I mean, obviously, the position of the stars and planets and whatever else doesn’t determine, like, everything about you. But maybe if you listen closely to them, you could actually find something meaningful! _

**Oh, god, Phil, there’s way too much searching for meaning in my life already, I know the old branding is dead but this is basically asking for an existential crisis.**

_ But that’s the whole thing about your moon! You’re someone who wants to search for meaning in the universe! _

**Yeah, I need meaning in my life, of course I do! But like, I’m not gonna search in astrology for it. I’d rather search, like, in my path in life and who I am and stuff. And what I do, with videos or whatever content I create. The people I work with. That stuff. Real stuff, not fake science and stars.**

_ Dan! It’s not the end of the podcast yet, you can’t inject the moral right here in the middle.  _

**I’ll inject whatever I want, thanks! Speaking of, are we getting around to my Uranus yet?**

_ Patience, Daniel.  _

**Oi, get on with it.**

_ We need to talk about your final Gemini first, which is Mercury. And we need to talk about it because it says you’re bound to have many, uh,  _ _ eclectic _ _ interests. Do you want to tell us about some of them? _

**You cannot kinkshame me on this show, I did not consent.**

_ And there’s also some more stuff about the kind of stimulating environments you need. _

**Okay yeah, this is not real science, this is you making shit up about ‘stimulation,’ where the hell did you even find this?**

_ The internet, of course, where all true facts live. _

**So it’s a sex thing, you’re telling me this is a sex thing. ‘Stimulating,’ nobody uses that word if it’s not a sex thing. ‘The internet,’ yeah, okay Phil. Jesus christ, and you were worried about ‘dissecting’ getting us demonetized.**

_ I believe the recording will show that you suggested that it’s a sex thing, not me. That’s the beauty of a podcast! _

**You’re the one going around using the word ‘stimulating’ every other sentence, jesus. Can we just move on? This is getting worse by the second.**

_ Okay, okay. Look, this has obviously been hard on you so far, so I’ll do something nice for you now. _

**Why do I get the feeling this is going to be something not nice...**

_ It will be nice! I was reading ahead through the next section, and I learned that since your Venus is in Leo, you need loads of attention paid to you, and I should make sure to tell you how wonderful you are. So Dan, you are wonderful. Thanks for making a podcast with me.  _

**Ugh, disgusting. Okay, this has gotten way too emotional, I have stars calling me out and Uranus telling me I should be stimulated or something-**

_ No, no, do you want to hear what it actually says about your Uranus? _

**Do I?**

_ It’s in Capricorn. “A great battler. He has so much power, that one thinks nothing can defeat him.” _

**Tell that to a large deep dish Chicago pizza, I have absolutely been defeated more than once. That’s a good one, though. I like my Uranus.**

_ Is that really the note you want to end this episode on? _

**This whole thing was a disaster from start to finish, so I feel like it represented the show quite well.**

_ But it’s our disaster, so I think it’s alright. Do you feel like we learned anything today? I feel like I need to go back to reading the forums some more.  _

**I learned that you’re a squiggly, wobbly, unpredictable person who likes to leave socks on the floor. Oh, wait! No, I already knew that. I feel like this was more just a confirmation of the things we already know, sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy. You go enjoy those forums, though, Phil.**

_ I will! So I bet some of you guys know way more about this stuff than us, so feel free to keep tweeting me your analyses. And make sure you tag Dan, because he really wants to read them all as well. _

**I would love nothing more than to spend my free time reading fake science, yes. I feel like this is our twenty-second endscreen, minus the screen bit.**

_ It is. We’re in the endscreen, just imagine us hanging out in our little corner.  _

**We are actually in the corner, though, in the lounge. Sort of weird, not being on camera.**

_ It is weird. Maybe this is the start of our ASMR channel. Anyway, make sure you’re subscribed to our podcast, and tweet us your ideas for upcoming episodes! Or else Dan will just be subjected to mysterious bulbasaurs. _

**Oh god, I don’t want to think about it. Yeah, tweet us, subscribe, I’m pointing at nothing which you can’t see but I feel like I have to point somewhere.**

_ Bye! _

**Bye!**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> reblog this chapter [here](https://uselessphillie.tumblr.com/post/182735488870/new-fic-giving-the-people-what-they-want-the)!


	2. Popping Out Gerbils! (Reading Our Old Tweets)

**You want to start us off, Phil?**

**__** _Hello, DanAndPhilPODCAST...birds!_

**Alright, yes! Birds! And why’s that, Phil?**

**__** _Dan, do you remember way back in 2017 when we made a video exposing our Instagram explore pages?_

**That was last year but sure, Phil, I remember. Better than you, apparently.**

**__** _Was that - are you sure that was just last year? It feels ages ago. Anyway, some of you may have seen it, we had a little look through our Instagrams and it was very...revealing._

**Revealing, god. Yeah, we learned a lot about Phil and his...interests. My page was whack though. Inaccurate.**

**__** _Mhmm. Those are some sweet, sweet mems. So today we thought we’d have a little part two of sorts, but this time with...our old tweets._

**So there’s no escaping, no blaming some funky Instagram algorithm, these are real actual tweets created by us. Prepare to be shocked and horrified.**

**__** _Some of these are from so long ago, I feel like I wasn’t even alive yet when I tweeted them._

**Plot twist, guys, Phil’s a clone - wait, didn’t I mention that in the show? I think I did. Anyway, conspiracy theory for you, quiffed Phil is a clone, so he doesn’t remember those old tweets.**

**__** _That’ll be number one trending on Twitter an hour after this episode goes up for sure._

**‘Hashtag ClonePhil’, I can see it now.**

**__** _Don’t encourage them! So anyway, how this is gonna work is, we each took a little dive into the other person’s account and curated a...varied selection of tweets to read out. And hopefully we can provide some context, some explanation, some bants..._

**This’ll be great, cause clone-Phil doesn’t remember anything before 2018 and I’ve deleted half my tweets pre-TATINOF! Let the bants begin, Phil, I believe you were going to start with whatever you found on me?**

**__** _Okay, I decided I would start you off with an easy one, because I think the internet already knows this story a bit. This one’s from November 2010, and it says[“i just burnt some pasta and made the fire alarms in three flats go off.”](https://twitter.com/danielhowell/status/7187054471421952) And then Dan...you used the xD face!_

**Random xD! Eugh, okay, yeah everyone knows the story. Didn’t realize you had to put water in pasta to cook it, blah blah blah. Although I don’t think - did I mention the fire alarms? Three flats, it set off, I literally buried myself in my duvet afterward and refused to come out for two days. I had to check the halls to make sure I didn’t see any of my neighbors whenever I finally did leave.**

**__** _And this was like - in case people don’t know - this was in your university housing. So I had no part in this._

**Yeah, yeah Phil was completely innocent, it was entirely on me and my inability to cook. Although, y’know how people like - if you don’t have someone to teach you something, and you just don’t know how to do it? Like, that’s what that was, I didn’t know. Nobody taught me how to make pasta! I didn’t need to know and nobody ever tried to tell me!**

**__** _I mean, you obviously needed to know._

**Well yeah, I set a fucking pot of noodles on fire, I needed to know. But nobody felt the need to teach me! God, I came out here to have a good time and I’m just…I’m really feeling attacked right now?**

**__** _Was it like, was it actually on fire? Because that would make a great YouTube channel, spaghettiisonfire!_

**Fuck off. Yeah, it was on fire, like the edges. I’m sure my branding was thriving then, I should’ve made a channel just for setting pasta on fire. Better content than anything I’ve ever made, honestly.**

**__** _Well I have to say Dan, that I’m grateful that your cooking skills have improved a bit since then._

**Yes, I’m capable of making pasta without burning the house down, thank god. The only useful thing I learned at uni. Can we move on?**

**__** _I suppose. While we’re on the topic of food, I have another one for you. And also with an Italian, carbs-covered-in-sauce type of vibe. This one is really ancient, from October 2009 -[“pizza express don’t have” - good grammar, Dan - “don’t have what i want. I’m in a mood now.”](https://twitter.com/danielhowell/status/5173219112) I feel like you could’ve tweeted this today and nothing would have been different._

**This is a personal attack because you’re not wrong. Also...okay, today, the grammar would be better. Probably. It’d be better, yeah. I mean, eighteen-year-old me, I didn’t have to sit and listen to you waffling on about your English language degree. But not having what I want? A pizza crime, truly.**

**__** _What was like, the ultimate Pizza Express order back in the day?_

**Okay, it was this Padana - not quite but like. Almost? They had a different sauce I think, cause I stopped ordering there when they changed it. But like a good fancy pizza with goat cheese and spinach and stuff.**

**__** _Was that what qualified as a fancy night out for you?_

**I was a broke uni student who couldn’t even cook pasta, some slightly above-average pizza was about all I could hope for. Plus, tons of them back home, so if I felt homesick, y’know.**

**__** _Not that we really go above and beyond in the pizza department these days, either…_

**Just because you like to call it ‘trash pizza’ doesn’t mean it isn’t the best thing you’ve ever put in your mouth - oh god, okay, nope, let’s - Dominos is great, what’s the next tweet you’re going to shame me with?**

_Shall we have a takeaway tonight? After all this cringe we’re having to endure._

**We? We aren’t having to endure anything, at least not yet. **

**__** _I have a lot of fear as to what you’re hiding on your laptop. Dan’s sat here like, with his laptop angled as far away from me as possible, it’s terrifying._

**Oh I’ve got some great tweets lined up for you, Lester. And it’s all your fault! You tweeted them, and you never deleted them. He’s brought it upon himself, guys, so you can’t be mad at whatever I bring up.**

**__** _Spoilers, Danny. And it’s still your turn in the hot seat. I just want to preface this next one with saying that I have like, a visceral memory of this happening. From June 2011, it says[“i’ve decided to revisit my 15 year old self by singing evanescence in front of my keyboard.”](https://twitter.com/danielhowell/status/80703775207198720)_

**Hey! Hey! You said I sounded good, I distinctly remember you saying I sounded ‘just like her’ okay. Don’t encourage me if you don’t want to hear it.**

**__** _I definitely never said that. You have no proof that I said that._

**I have an ironclad memory, Phil. But even if you didn’t, it was payback for all the shower singing I had to endure. Still have to endure, thanks.**

**__** _Maybe our next flat has to have like, steel walls._

**Steel walls, you want steel fucking walls in our flat? Jesus christ, this is coming from the guy who has to have carpet, and he wants steel walls. May as well just build us an entire flat to look like Dil’s evil scientist lab, we can have metal floors too! Oh and we can keep the next Phil clone in there.**

**__** _Hey, I happen to think that carpet and steel walls would look great together. Very complementary, and also functional._

**Funct - oh my god. Phil is officially banned from any interior decorating anywhere ever. Steel walls, jesus christ.**

**__** _This is supposed to be a roast of you, Dan, stop shaming me._

**It’s payback, you made me imagine steel walls. Although, that could have a really industrial look...but we’re not getting steel walls. That’s - okay yeah, no, no steel walls. Do you have more of me to roast or am I done?**

**__** _You’re still rare, Dan. Need some more time on the fire._

**Oh, getting on to spitroasting jokes, are we?**

**__** _No, we’re not, stop it. I was just going say, speaking of fire, mister danisnotonfire, you used to tweet quite a lot about him, what happened there?_

**He’s apparently been thrown into a fire. As it should be.**

**__** _I feel like I have to do my best impression of you while I read this one. But like, the way you sounded seven years ago._

**I didn’t sound that different seven years ago!**

**__** _You did! I need to tap into my...my aural mind palace. Here we go -[“about bloody time i made a new danisnotonfire video eh? i’ll get on that.”](https://twitter.com/danielhowell/status/174528392031510529) Aw, nice content tease, Danny. _

**Plot twist, did I tweet that seven years ago or seven days ago?**

**__** _The real question is, how long after that tweet did you actually put a video up?_

**I don’t know, Phil, how long did it take? Probably not eight months.**

**__** _Probably not. Do you want to take this opportunity to spon the next dinof, then, or shall we just move on?_

**Ha ha, let’s move on.**

**__** _I think you might regret saying that. Do you remember, like, this used to be a big thing on Twitter, where there’d be some weird hashtag that was trending and people would tweet in responses to it? This was like, way back in the day._

**Oh, alright, yeah, I remember...get it over with.**

**__** _The hashtag you tweeted under - and this was in 2009 - was #wordsaftersex. Do you want to take a guess about what you may have said? Or do you actually remember, it’s just branded in your mind forever -_

**I have a feeling that, if it isn’t branded into my brain now, it will be as soon as you read it.**

**__** _It says[“now make sure to buy a cork or that gerbil could pop out at any inconvenient moment.”](https://twitter.com/danielhowell/status/2669497484) Now Dan, please explain that to the internet so it can be memorialized forever._

**Oh for fuck’s sake, random humor...remind me exactly what day that tweet was again? I have something I need to take care of - no, no, don’t take the laptop! I have a tweet to get rid of!**

**__** _No! The internet is forever, Daniel._

**Don’t fucking remind me, the internet is forever, and now I’ll have a tweet talking about gerbils and sex to remember me by for the rest of time. Screw TABINOF and DAPGO, print this out and plaster it on my grave.**

**__** _There’s just so much to unpack here. What’s, like, what is he popping out of? Or is it a female gerbil?_

**I don’t want to know, I don’t want to revisit that, I don’t want anything to do with - god, it’s like. It was the placenta thing, it was the obsession with placentas. I probably picked the most random words I could come up with and strung them together in a sentence.**

**__** _In your defense - like, if you weren’t on the internet in 2009, this makes no sense._

**It was peak humor at the time, honestly.**

**__** _It really was. Which, I don’t know what that says about the state of the internet back then. But we enjoyed it._

**It was worse, objectively it was worse.**

**__** _I don’t know. You guys can debate that in the comments, if you’ve been around for that long._

**God, some of them were children in 2009, some were actual babies. Trust me, it was worse. I made jokes about placentas, you’ve seen the videos. Pure cringe.**

**__** _Yep. I’m just having a look at the last couple here, and I forgot that I actually have one more that’s about food. This is like - I almost said that it’s from pretty recently, but it’s from 2015._

**Oh my god, we’re all dying, that was...was that four years ago now? 2019, jesus. I mean, in the vast span of time, that’s recent.**

**__** _Okay, don’t get all existential right now. Although, this tweet was pretty dramatic. You said[“today i awoke with a blocked nose leaving me unable to taste i am drifting through an empty foodless purgatory my life has lost all meaning.”](https://twitter.com/danielhowell/status/604673504886288385) I tried to read that in a way that conveyed the lack of punctuation, did I do it alright?_

**Yeah yeah, I don’t use punctuation, whatever. I gotta say, though...that still holds up. That’s fully, one hundred percent accurate, you all know what I’m talking about. And if you can’t taste food, what’s the point? Life isn’t worth living without good food.**

**__** _That’s true. Luckily you’re not really sick all that often? You’ve got some super immune system that keeps you tasting things all year long._

**Right, I don’t get sick often, except that one time I was ill in bed for like a full day just watching videos, what, last year? Couple years ago? Either way, I am blessed to be able to taste whatever I want whenever I want.**

**__** _“A full day,” Dan I actually hate you. Every time I’m ill it goes on for at least a month._

**Yeah, well, that’s what you get for celebrating your birthday for an entire month, you have to pay for it. You should just celebrate one day like the rest of us.**

**__** _What! What does that have anything to do with it! You can’t use birthday karma as real logic._

**It’s not - I don’t believe in karma, but like. You can’t celebrate your birthday for a month and eat loads of sweets and then somehow not get sick at some point. Your immune system is punishing you.**

**__** _I’ll do what I want! You’re not my mum!_

**Not your mum, yeah, okay, mister ‘just get me loads of fangtastics’.**

**__** _And I always give you at least one out of every bag, don’t I?_

**Yes, you’re such a kind and generous birthday king. We’re all blessed to have you ruling over us for an entire month.**

**__** _You really are. Now Dan, I know we said that we were gonna mostly do old tweets, but I had to pull this next one just because I really want you to tell this full story to the internet._

**Oh for fuck’s sake, I can’t catch a break. What story? May as well get this over with.**

**__** _This is from July 2017, so not even two years ago, and it says,[“i thought i was stuck in a lift because it didn’t move for two minutes and started freaking out then realised that i never pressed a button.”](https://twitter.com/danielhowell/status/888861281415024640)_

**Okay, okay, look. I was scrolling through my camera roll, okay, the lift showed up, I got on, kept scrolling, doors shut, and I was still just scrolling. Had a few hundred failed selfies to delete. And I just kept going, until I realized nothing was happening, I wasn’t moving, and then - I mean, you know the feeling, we got stuck in that lift while we were filming the week in the life video. Sudden panic, and then I was like ‘okay, yeah, this is it, I’m ready to embrace death, it’s coming for me, this is how I die’. And then I noticed the lift panel didn’t have anything lit up, so I hit the button for the third floor again, and...the lift started moving.**

**__** _Wow Dan. How did that never make it into a ‘Reasons Why Dan’s A Fail’?_

**It never felt like the right time, I’ve still got it on my list, but I haven’t figured out how to make a full video out of me standing in a box for two minutes. Y’all would watch, though, wouldn’t you? Five hours of pigeonfest.**

**__** _We could do a dramatic recreation. I’m sure our neighbors wouldn’t think it was weird at all if they caught us filming each other in the lift._

**A ‘dramatic’ recreation, as if the whole event wasn’t already traumatizing enough. And you say that like it’s the weirdest thing they’d ever deal with from us, I’m sure they’re about ready to file a noise complaint on us for all the screaming during gaming videos. Don’t want to know what they think we get up to.**

**__** _The podcasts have been relatively tame, though. No screaming here._

**Yet. Just wait til we do something competitive.**

**__** _Yeah, we want to maybe figure out some little games we can play in future episodes, so make sure you tweet us your ideas using #DvPPodcast, and maybe we’ll play one!_

**Phil is determined to resurrect Dan vs Phil, he just wants to prove he can win without all or nothings. Even though we all know the second he loses, we’ll be back to all or nothings. So please tweet us, that way I can demolish Phil and reclaim my rightful status and the crown I worked so hard to craft.**

**__** _Don’t talk about crafting. So Dan, I saved this one for last, because even though it’s pretty tame, I thought it just encapsulates your personality on Twitter. And also because I’ve heard your rant about this like a million times, so I thought I’d give you the chance to tell our viewers about your passion for this topic._

**Alright, Phil, hit me. Let’s hear it.**

**__** _From February 2014,[“when every tweet takes twice as long to write in a battle against autocorrect to keep all my i’s lowercase i begin to question my choices.”](https://twitter.com/danielhowell/status/437934594856603648)_

**Look I have an aesthetic, okay, you all know this. Lowercase everything, it just looks softer. I know you have, like, your proper grammar and stuff but this is just...it looks better typing this way, and that includes the lowercase i. Honestly, they should just make it so you can turn that off? Why isn’t that a thing yet? Is it a thing? It should be.**

**__** _Softer? How does it look softer? Doesn’t that go against your edgy branding?_

**I’m not shouting everything, and I can still be edgy, just throw in a good meme reference. The words are all in black anyway, perfect for my monochrome aesthetic.**

**__** _Wow, who knew Twitter was designed just for your aesthetic, Dan. Guess you’ll have to keep using it then, eh? What can we expect from you going forward in 2019?_

**Guess you’ll have to wait and see. More edgy content in the form of text on Twitter, I’m sure. Probably an equally monochrome Instagram story if I take any acceptable selfies or find anything worth posting.**

**__** _Whoa, don’t mention Instagram here, that’s another podcast._

**I mean, we already did it in a video, but I guess get ready for that, guys, Phil’s got an idea. Which means I’ll be subjected to even more harrowing content, but at least you can’t see old Instagram stories, thank god for that.**

**__** _The internet is forever Daniel, never forget that._

**Yeah well I can’t see them on Instagram anymore, can I, Phil? Thought not. But y’know what else is forever?**

**__** _What?_

**These fantastic tweets from The AmazingPhil...shall we take a look?**

**__** _Oh no. I guess it had to come to this at some point, but like...I’m legitimately scared. I’ve been on the internet for so long. I’m a literal dinosaur._

**Phil’s the oldest thing on the internet, guys. But what could you possibly be worried about, Phil? It couldn’t be this particular tweet from April of 2015, in which you informed the world that[‘a dog food advert just made you hungry’](https://twitter.com/AmazingPhil/status/628203557938950144), could it?**

**__** _Shut up, you can’t start with that one!_

**I can and I believe I just did, care to break that down for us? What did the dog food look like and why on earth was it appealing?**

**__** _I mean, you can’t tell me that you’ve never looked at some of those treats and thought, “Hmmm, I wonder what that would taste like?”_

**Phil...I’ve literally never had that thought in my life.**

**__** _Well you’re the weird one here, then! Guys, back me up on this one, those cute little bone shapes? Little twisties? They look delicious._

**You can get that...in a pasta...you don’t need dog food for that?**

**__** _Whatever, Dan. I bet if you polled our listeners right now, at least...some percentage of them have had a cheeky nibble of a dog biscuit before. You’re missing out._

**Please...for the love of god...tell me you haven’t actually tried eating a dog biscuit...**

**__** _I’m not answering that. Let us know in the comments whether or not you’ve tried one, and if it tasted good. Because I’m curious, since I’ve definitely never tried it myself._

**Phil’s actually a dog, guys. Or is he a cat? Cause we do have the whole cat whisker thing going, except pinof is dead, rip. But I did also find a cheeky little tweet from back in 2010 in which you said[‘I woke up miaowing’](https://twitter.com/AmazingPhil/status/21655166137)? So which is it, Phil, dog or cat?**

**__** _Dat! Or is it cog, I forget which we decided._

**Did we ever decide? Is there a right decision? I vaguely recall a meme reference in there...anyway! So part cat part dog, then?**

**__** _Yeah. But you know like, when you first wake up in the morning, and there’s a bit of sun coming in, and you just want to stretch out and soak it all up? It’s like that. And if a cheeky meow sneaks up on you, then so be it._

**Right, okay well Phil’s some kind of animal, then, guys. The original furry, perhaps? Did he expose me to the culture, and that’s what all this is about? You do have quite a habit of tweeting about animals.**

**__** _Because animals are great! Everyone likes animals. All of Twitter should be converted to just animal content. Wait! It’s a bird - like, the Twitter! The bird. The logo. You know!_

**Very good, Phil, yeah, it’s a bird. They’re called tweets, pat on the back for you. And y’know, this makes a whole lot more sense now, reading back over the tweets I found, that you think Twitter should just be animal content.**

**__** _You should’ve made a pie chart, one that shows what percentage of my tweets are animal-related._

**Wow yeah what a great idea, I’m sure they’d all love to see a pie chart. Oh, wait.**

**__** _Everyone loves a good pie chart! Don’t sit here and pretend that statistics don’t get you going, Danny._

**Phil Phil Phil Phil...nobody...nobody can see the pie chart, even if we had one. It’s a podcast.**

**__** _...oh. Well, it’s still a good idea. I bet it’d be the most interesting pie chart in the history of pie charts._

**Okay, Phil, you go make that pie chart. Share it with the world. I’m gonna share your next animal-related tweet, bringing us up to a grand total of three out of three animal tweets.**

**__** _That’s a hundred percent. A whole pie._

**The world’s most boring pie chart, a circle. Anyway, do you recall us talking about those hashtags that floated around a while ago, the ones where you’d tag it and give your fun answer?**

**__** _Mhmm, yeah. Oh no, what one did I post under?_

**Oh, if you thought mine was bad...this one was #describeyoursexlifewithavideogame which honestly in itself is a horrible hashtag because it’s way too long, like who had the capacity to type that many letters in a row with no spaces and not fuck something up?**

**__** _Me, obviously._

**Well rub your privileged English degree in someone else’s face. Anyway, your answer was[‘Robot Unicorn Attack’](https://twitter.com/AmazingPhil/status/152384138568142848), and I’m having some major flashbacks to that game, wow. Care to tell us how you came to that conclusion?**

**__** _God, this was just - it doesn’t even make any sense! But that was like, kind of the point. These hashtag games were the peak of LOL random humor._

**That is very true, the real purpose of these was to determine who could come up with the funniest response, and I have to say, Phil, Robot Unicorn Attack?**

**__** _There’s just so many possibilities. Who is the robot? Who’s the unicorn? Who or what are they attacking?_

**So many unanswered questions! It was clickbait in its earliest form.**

**__** _And they’ll just - they’ll just remain unanswered. Please, Dan, I have to have tweeted about something non-animal related at some point in my internet career._

**Oh you have, I’d guess the other half of your tweets are related to the only thing you love in life as much as animals: food. And I think it’s only right that we start with this tweet from not even two years ago, March of 2017, when you said[‘LIFE HACK: cover your radiator in banana skins to create a large banana scented air freshener’](https://twitter.com/AmazingPhil/status/839117881669521408). See now, I remember that distinctly. Care to explain to our audience how that came about?**

**__** _I hacked our life, that’s how it came about. The internet said that it would work and I’m always down for a bit of an experiment._

**See, Phil, that’s fine if you’re living alone. However, we happen to live in the same flat, which means that any experiments need to be approved by me ahead of time. Right, guys, just add this to the list of why Phil’s a horrible flatmate.**

**__** _I’m not horrible! Nothing went on fire, and I remember it smelling like a wonderful, freshly baked loaf of banana bread. Isn’t that how you remember it?_

**It smelled great for like ten seconds, and then you left it on til the skins turned brown! And then it smelled like rotten bananas for a week, and we had to spend nearly twenty minutes scrubbing crusted-on banana bits off the radiator!**

**__** _But don’t you remember the candle I got you to get the smell out afterwards? What was it, like vanilla....twigs...some kind of wood…_

**Cedarwood vanilla, which actually did smell alright, but I couldn’t actually burn it for the first two days cause the smell mixed with burnt banana made me nauseous.**

**__** _Well, it’s the thought that counts. Just like how I thought banana radiators would be our next great invention._

**Speaking of great inventions, I have one here, it’s called the ‘get rid of Phil-inator’! Whoops, now he’s gone, bye guys!**

**__** _Hey! You’d miss me if I was suddenly gone. Then you’d have to podcast all alone, you’d just be some guy talking to the empty space next to him._

**Phil’s right, guys, this would be a whole lot more depressing if I had to just talk to myself the whole time. It’d be like one of my videos haha...ha...anyway. Since we’re on the subject of food and inventions, let’s take another jump back to the grand year of 2017.**

**__** _Was I particularly weird in 2017 or something? What were you feeding me that year to make me tweet all this stuff?_

**Phil, you’re particularly weird all the time. Apparently, you were eating dog food, so that one’s on you.**

**__** _Ha-ha. What is it then, go on._

**Alright, you said[‘I’m glad I was born in the futuristic microwave popcorn era as I would definitely not have survived in caveman times’](https://twitter.com/AmazingPhil/status/851182248371957760). Wow, see I think that summarizes just about everything about you, Phil: ‘would not have survived in caveman times’. You can’t see, you can’t run or do any exercise, and you’d have died without microwave popcorn. **

**__** _Look, I stand by this one. Anyone who was alive before microwave popcorn was invented was missing out on an important snack food staple, and I pity those people._

**And by ‘important snack food staple’, Phil actually means ‘important snack food item that also lends itself particularly well to falling into cushions and onto the floor and never being picked up by the consumer of that snack food item’, isn’t that right, Phil?**

**__** _There’s a reason why I do all the hoovering in our flat. But like, Dan, don’t pretend that I’ve ever sat down with a bowl of popcorn and you’ve gone, “No thanks, don’t want any!”_

**Yeah, but at least when I eat it, I don’t make a complete mess. Spoiler alert, guys, Daniel and Depression was the only time I’ve ever made such a catastrophic mess with popcorn. That scene was actually modeled after Phil’s normal popcorn-eating habits.**

**__** _I won’t be shamed for enjoying popcorn the way it was meant to be consumed - either handful by massive handful or by throwing each piece up and trying to catch it in your mouth. The only two valid methods._

**Because we can’t just eat like normal people, no, we have to eat like- oh, wait, like animals! Makes perfect sense, everything’s coming together. Shall we read another tweet?**

**__** _Sure, I’ve had no problems defending myself so far. Bring it on, Danny!_

**Okay good luck defending this one, Phil, in 2014 you tweeted[‘Just had to google what year it is’](https://twitter.com/AmazingPhil/status/493792326700269569), and before you hop to the ‘oooh but it was probably January and everyone forgets’, Phil, this was at the end of July. July.**

**__** _Look. When you finally grow up and become as old as me, Dan, you’ll understand how the years start blurring together._

**Oh great, that was back in 2014, which means I’m officially as old as you were. Oh my god, wait, what year is it? It’s- is it 2017? 2018? Did we do a tour last year, has it been ten years? Ten pinofs?**

**__** _See, you don’t even know what year it is! Maybe you should Google it!_

**Phil...Phil I’m- oh, for god’s sake, okay. Phil’s old, guys, he’s an internet dinosaur who can’t remember what year it is.**

**__** _What species of dinosaur do y’think I’d be? Personally I’d like to be a stegosaurus. Or maybe like, what are the really tall ones called? Because that’s - that’s definitely us._

**Brontosauruses? I think for height we’d both have to be brontosauruses, but Phil I could see you as being a stegosaurus, big and clumsy? Perfect fit.**

**__** _Oh whatever. Tweet us and let us know what you think out dinosaur-sonas are!_

**We’re encouraging scalies, there we go, that’s that, moving on! Now, Phil, this last one - this is another 2017 tweet but it’s got a bit of a story to it so let’s see here, it says[‘The hotel receptionist asked how many L’s are in my name and I said “I’m a one L kinda guy. Less lip, more of the ip” I just shouldn’t speak’](https://twitter.com/AmazingPhil/status/854192051365134336). Well, you heard it from Phil himself, he shouldn’t speak, guys. **

**__** _This is a real problem, though! My mother, the lovely Kathryn, maybe you’ve heard of her, hi Mum if you’re listening, she decided to only spell my name with one L! So everywhere I go, I’m subjected to people either just assuming there’s two L’s, which, how rude, or asking me which it is! And so I have to get creative sometimes, for my own sanity._

**Okay, you had me up until the ‘getting creative’ part, Phil. Of all the ways you could possibly imagine to ‘get creative’, ‘less lip, more of the ip’ is what you decided on? ‘I’m a one L kinda guy’? I’m- I just, I don’t even know, Phil, what even went through your head?**

**__** _I don’t know. I don’t know! Sometimes, like, you just say things and you shouldn’t have said them but there’s no going back, so you might as well tweet about it._

**Phil, I think you just summarized your whole career in one sentence.**

**__** _Probably. Please tell me that it’s the end, I can’t take any more of this cringe-fest._

**That’s all I’ve got for you, Phil, be glad I couldn’t be bothered to really dig. Literally, guys, go look through Phil’s tweets, these are all right there. He never deletes any of them.**

**__** _Don’t encourage them._

**Oh but you can encourage them to give us dinosaur-sonas, is that so?**

**__** _I’ll do what I want, it’s my endscreen, except there’s still no endscreen because you can’t see us. I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to that._

**It’s our endscreen you idiot, our nonexistent endscreen. DanAndPhilPODCAST, both of us. **

**__** _Whatever. Say some of the endscreen things, Dan, I’m tired from all these old traumas you’ve dredged up._

**This is what happens when you get old, guys, you forget what year it is and get tired from reading a grand total of ten sentences. Anyway, thanks for listening, subscribe to hear more of us - if that’s the kind of torture you want to subject yourself to - and check out our last podcast over there! You can’t see cause I’m pointing.**

**__** _See, you can’t get used to it either. Leave us your ideas for future episodes in the comments, and remember - the internet is forever. Bye!_

**Bye!**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> reblog this chapter [here](https://knlalla.tumblr.com/post/182892328922/new-ch-giving-the-people-what-they-want-the)!


	3. WE DID SOME DEEP PROBING [Conspiracy Theories]

_ Hello, DanAndPhilPODCAST…aliens!  _

**That’s right, and why’s that, Phil?**

_ Today, we’re going to be transported into space together, on a hunt for new forms of life, safe in our podcast spaceship - _

**No, guys, this isn’t a live-experience episode of the Sims, we’re not reenacting Dil Howlter’s life.**

_ No. No one wants to see that. _

**Well, I mean some people might - and whoever you are, I’m not judging you - but that’s not what this- no, that’s- we’re not doing that. Conspiracy theories! That’s what we’re doing. Talking about, like, aliens.**

_ Wow, Dan. Great explanation of all of conspiracy theories. Maybe there’ll be one about aliens. But this is like, an entire subgenre of the internet that we’re just gonna dip our little pinky toes into on this episode. _

**Oh my god, there’s literally so much stuff out there, like you name it, there’s a conspiracy theory about it. Not even just like, the well-known stuff, there’s like...satirical conspiracy theories, theories about people who supposedly died still being alive, people who are supposedly alive actually being dead - I mean, Phil, you’ve seen the Avril Lavigne thing, right?**

_ The what? What on earth is the Avril Lavigne thing, don’t tarnish Avril’s good name by making her the center of some - _

**No, no, it’s- it’s not a bad thing, it’s just...weird? I guess? Someone compiled a whole thread of evidence to ‘prove’ that Avril actually like...died? A while ago? And was replaced by a doppelganger named Michelle or something. It’s actually really well put together, even if it is a bit far-fetched.**

_ I feel like I should preface this entire episode by telling you guys that for the past like, five days, Dan’s just been sat in a pitch black room, hunched over his laptop, falling down into the depths of the internet while doing research for this. _

**You say that as if I’m not literally always sat in a pitch black room, hunched over my laptop and falling into the depths of the internet. This is nothing new for Dan, guys.**

_ True. But it’s been worse than normal. I haven’t had anyone to beat at Mario Kart all week, it’s tragic, really, always getting first place by myself... _

**‘Beat at Mario Kart’ my ass, as if you win any time I play. He won one time, guys, like two months ago, and he won’t let it go.**

_ It’s important to take pride in your accomplishments, Dan. _

**Phil, you take pride in a single accomplishment for like, five years. It’s Mario Kart, just face the fact that I’ll forever be better than you.**

_ Never, Dan, and this is not a podcast for facts! _

**Well, you’re right about that at least. This is a podcast for blatant lies and falsified proof rolled up into a neat package that looks convincing as long as you don’t poke it!**

_ Wait, hang on, you can’t seriously go into this with that attitude! You have to at least be a little bit open to the possibility that there’s a grain of truth somewhere. _

**Phil...none of these are even remotely plausible. The only ‘grain of truth’ is in the fact that like...bits and pieces of these things exist. Aliens probably exist somewhere out there, but do I really think Area 51 is some secret alien-testing facility? Of course not.**

_ Well at least let the listeners come to their own conclusions. Guys, don’t let his cynicism infiltrate your brains too much! _

**Ugh, fine, fine, for the sake of the podcast, I will pretend to believe. Or at least pretend to believe these are maybe a little, tiny bit plausible.**

_ Thank you. Okay Dan, mister holder-of-all-the-plausible-research, what kinds of conspiracy theories are you going to present us with today? _

**Well I think the only logical thing to do, given the fact that we’re already talking about it, is to stick with the subject of aliens. Particularly, aliens and the government, because of course that’s what it always boils down to, isn’t it?**

_ Government is good for some things, maybe not so good when it comes to aliens. Or maybe that’s just what you  _ _ want _ _ me to believe! _

**No, no, Phil, I’m being completely agnostic here, no belief in either direction. Now, there are tons of government conspiracies out there - one particularly hilarious - I mean, particularly...interesting one has to do with all our high-ranking officials actually being lizard-people, but that’s not the one I want to talk about. Partly because I think you’d have too much fun with that one, Scaly Phil.**

_ Oi! You can’t tell me that you don’t sometimes think Parliament would be better if it was run by lizards. _

**I think a lot of things could be run better by lizards, but that’s a whole other podcast.**

_ Ooh, lizard-cast!  _

**Phil, we’re not getting any lizards, guys he’s literally on his phone googling ‘how to buy lizards’. I said we can’t get a hamster, we are definitely** **not** **getting lizards.**

_ But Dan, they’re so cute, think about how he would just sit under his little sun lamp all day, how he would scamper around the flat, he’d probably really like to sit on you because you’re so warm… _

**Phil, we’re not getting a lizard. Anyway! The particular conspiracy that we’re actually gonna talk about has to do with aliens and the government! Or, I guess it’s really the military. And there are no lizards involved! Actually, that’s not specified, so maybe there are lizards, who knows?**

_ Perhaps we just can’t see them, because they’re...invizards. _

**Phil...can we make a DanAndPhilPODCAST rule that puns are banned unless I want to make them? Cause otherwise they’re just in poor taste.**

_ Definitely not, no one in our lizard democracy, our lizocracy, would vote to put that rule into effect.  _

**Oh, for god’s sake...let’s just, let’s just get on with it. So you’ve all heard of Area 51, yeah? Purported alien research center in the US desert?**

_ Yeah, I think most people know that one, at least vaguely. _

**Well if they didn’t, there you go. As it turns out, that is apparently not the only talk of alien-related happenings in US deserts, there’s a town on the Colorado-New Mexico border that supposedly houses an underground joint operation between the military and aliens called ‘Dulce Base’.**

_ Colorado and New Mexico, are those two of the square ones in the middle?  _

**I don’t know, Phil, you’re the one with the USA map shirt, are they?**

_ Probably, everything in America that’s not Florida is in the middle. So it’s called Dulce Base. ‘Dulce’ is like...sweet, right, in...some language?  _

**Probably Spanish, or Portuguese or something. But yes, sweet. Although what’s been implied there is...maybe not so sweet…**

_ Ooooooooh way to intrigue us, Dan! Tell us more!  _

**So according to the cra- sorry, the perfectly normal and sane guy who theorized its existence - cause like, I guess he ‘intercepted alien communications’ in the area or something? Anyway, he claimed it was a place where aliens and the military like...tortured people? No wait, not that, they performed experiments on them. I guess that could include torture...**

_ So the aliens torture the humans? Isn’t it always the other way ‘round in films and stuff? _

**Maybe this is the alien revenge headquarters, right under the noses of the entire United States population or whatever.**

_ How can that be possible though? Wouldn’t they notice that people keep, like, disappearing into this torture facility? _

**Hey now, Phil, let’s not poke holes in the very well-constructed conspiracy theory! But yeah, honestly, no idea? Like, cool you heard some stuff beep-booping but like...does that mean there are aliens? And that the aliens are torturing people? I mean, come on.**

_ I love the idea, Dan, that the aliens make beep-booping sounds. They sound harmless, honestly. _

**That’s how they get you, Phil, they beep-boop and lure you into their underground facility and before you know it, you’re strapped to a table with a suspicious-looking probe pointed in your direction.**

_ Don’t talk about probing. Probing is banned from the podcast. _

**I mean it kinda goes hand in hand with aliens, I think it’s a valid thing to discuss if we’re talking about alien conspiracy theories.**

_ Disagree. We’ll ask the lizardocracy, let us know in the comments whether probing is a valid podcast topic.  _

**Phil, are you calling our listeners lizards? And asking them to vote on probing? This has gotten way out of hand.**

_ I don’t know, I don’t know what I’m saying! Don’t listen to me, Dan, you’re supposed to be guiding the conversation here. So like, this conspiracy theorist, what is his proof? He’s got to have at least some, if he’s attracted the attention of the internet. _

**Well this guy’s only real ‘proof’ was the beep-booping he supposedly heard, but a few years later, some other guy came forward and claimed to have been an employee there, so he could apparently just rattle off whatever ‘facts’- sorry, super truthful and accurate pieces of information from his very real and true experience.**

_ Wait, so he worked for the aliens?  _

**I guess he did, or the military? Maybe it was like...he was captured by the aliens and forced to work for them or something. He claimed there were like eighteen thousand of these aliens living in this underground facility so, I mean, if I were captured by eighteen thousand aliens…**

_ Would you want to be individually probed by each one, Dan?  _

**I mean, let’s just say I don’t blame him for not trying to escape.**

_ Ugh, I regret asking.  _

**Aliens and probing, Phil, told you they go hand in hand. But I think that’s enough for that theory, it might be time to move on to something a bit more...controversial.**

_ Oooh. That was quite a dark one to open with Dan, I’m hoping the next one won’t involve any torture plots. _

**No, this one just involves a lot of people ignoring science. And by ‘ignoring science’ I mean having very different interpretations of facts!**

_ I feel like I know where this one is going, for some reason... _

**That’s right, Phil, we’re talking about Flat Earth! The theory that, if any of you couldn’t guess by the name, implies that the Earth is actually flat! These are the people who time-traveled straight out of the Middle Ages to impart upon us their wisdom about how the Earth could not possibly be spherical since they can see the ‘edge’.**

_ Oooh, the edge of the Earth. What d’ya reckon it would look like, if there really was an edge? _

**Uh, I dunno Phil, maybe like...a big waterfall that just goes on into space? Like a proper edge-of-the-world kind of thing? I mean, I guess that’s how the term ‘edge of the world’ arose, but I’m sure there’s some cool artistic renderings out there. Since the real thing doesn’t exist.**

_ If you stepped off the edge, would you just float away into space? I have so many questions. _

**Maybe we should’ve gotten a flat-Earther on as a special guest so you could ask. I feel like you’d fall down until you left Earth’s gravitational field? Or would you even be able to leave it properly? Would it be the same as trying to launch a rocket, where you need so much power?**

_ See, now this is like, properly interesting. But if we had a guest, you couldn’t be here, you’d scare them away with your cynicism. _

**Yeah yeah, I’m so cynical and scary. Fine, what else would you ask them, then?**

_ I don’t know, like, what happens to the sky when you’re at the edge, does it just keep going? Where is the sun, is it in like, the middle of the flat part? How strong is the urge to just throw stuff off the edge when you’re standing there? I could go on for ages. _

**What’s on the other side? Do we all live on one side and the other side is something else? Maybe that’s where the secret alien facility is, and that Dulce Base place is the tunnel that connects our side to the other side where all the ‘aliens’ live.**

_ Wow, everything is connected. I thought it was just a bit of dirt on the other side, but that’s much more interesting.  _

**Here we are, thinking we know everything, when it’s the flat-Earthers and those two guys who discovered Dulce Base who are truly #woke.**

_ Their label as conspiracy theorists is...is in itself a cover-up!   _

**The true conspiracy was the conspiracy theorists all along! Mind blown.**

_ My brain hurts. _

**Okay, maybe we should move on before Phil becomes the living embodiment of the galaxy brain meme.**

_ Yeah. So Dan, these have been pretty tame so far, I think? You must have fallen way, way into the depths of the internet while you were researching, so tell us something really wild now! _

**Phil thinks aliens torturing humans and flat Earth are ‘tame’, but yeah sure let’s just blow right past that one! But really, okay, this one- this one’s like, it’s not that I believe it or anything, but like...it’s spooky.**

_ Ooh, celebrating Spooky Week early this year! Are you - we’re sat on some chairs, guys, this could be treacherous. _

**Oh fuck off, right, so this one- let me preface this, okay, it’s not that spooky on its own, but like. You have to listen to this, we’ll put the link in the description, but it’s this broadcast, okay. Like radio broadcast. And it’s been going since the early 1980s - this one’s pre-Phil, okay. Early eighties, and it’s just this station...that buzzes…**

_ A radio station that only plays static? Are you sure that isn’t a description of one of your nightmares instead? _

**This is literally a nightmare station okay, put me in the forest in the dark with this playing and I guarantee you I will actually shit myself. Absolute horror. But that’s- like that’s just horrifying on its own, right?**

_ Yeah, but I’m sure there’s more to it. _

**Well, right, cause this podcast is all about conspiracy theories. So this one, people believe a couple things - first of all, fact, apparently, it’s owned by Russian armed forces. Just another layer of like, major spook. But every now and then, the buzzing will stop and a person will rattle off some numbers in Russian, then it’ll go back to the buzz.**

_ Wait, so this random radio station is intercepting some secret Russian military code, and no one’s done anything about it? What’s the code say, someone must have cracked it by now if it’s been going on for longer than I’ve been alive! _

**No, no, people think this radio station** **is** **the secret Russian military code! Or like. Something like that, like they think it means something. Nobody actually knows what it means, though, like nobody’s figured it out. Most of the theories are about the buzzing, like, when it stops, the world’s gonna end or something.**

_ What! The world is being held together by a bunch of static? _

**I mean, for all we know about physics, that’s pretty much just as likely as the next random theory.**

_ It’s not random, though, like people must have some reason to believe that there’s meaning in a bunch of static and numbers. _

**Phil, that’s human nature. People are wired to find patterns in things, even meaningless ones. I bet someone got the radio station and set it up as a prank, broadcasting random numbers and buzzes just to fuck with people. Not everything means something, humans just want it to.**

_ But it  _ _ could _ _ mean something. How can you ever tell the difference? _

**Well, yeah, of course it** **could** **mean something, but it’s been going on with no explanation for longer than you’ve been alive, and you’re ancient. I think someone would’ve figured it out by now if there was an actual meaning to it.**

_ Maybe it’s just not time for us to find out yet. Maybe in the future, there’s a conspiracy theorist who is destined to crack the code and save the world from being destroyed by static. _

**Now that’s a sci-fi action thriller I’d watch the hell out of.**

_ We should write a screenplay. DanAndPhilFILMS. Actually that doesn’t sound good out loud, it’d have to be PhilAndDanFILMS. Put me in the front for once.  _

**You know the double-D doesn’t sound right either, though. That’s why it’s ‘Dan and Phil’, we can’t change the branding now!**

_ You’re right, two D’s is just too much. _

**Ugh, god, Phil, alright. Phil can’t handle two D’s guys.**

_ You’re the one who vetoed the branding, Dan. Anyway, we can’t start a film company. What were we talking about before - before all the D’s? _

**We - jesus christ - we were talking about the radio station and someone figuring out the mysterious code that will inevitably save the world.**

_ Oh right, in the future, because it’s their destiny and because fate is real and some people are just meant to know the secrets of the Russian codemakers.  _

**Guys, Phil’s secretly hoping that he’ll be the person fated to know the Russian radio station secrets.**

_ Imagine if I did figure it out, how would I tell everyone. A tweet? Should I make a video about it? What - what’s a good clickbait title for when you’ve got a world-unending secret? _

**I mean I think honesty is the best policy here - ‘Cracking Russian Codes and Saving the World!!! (NOT CLICKBAIT!)’. It won’t really matter, though, the Russian government will have it taken down in a matter of minutes.**

_ That would definitely not get monetized. _

**No, no it would not. And what a shame, because you saved the world! Although, we’re working under the assumption you could crack a cryptic code that nobody in nearly thirty five years has cracked. Guys, Phil has trouble with the mazes on the back of cereal boxes.**

_ Yes, but that’s the point! No one else was destined to crack it, it has to be me! Or - Dan! What if it’s you instead! _

**What, some cosmic entity has somehow blessed me with the ability to solve this puzzle?**

_ That’s my working conspiracy theory, yes. _

**Oh god, guys, Phil’s bought into the realm of conspiracy theories. Wait for his next video, ‘How I Became a Flat-Earther!’ or maybe it’ll be ‘Aliens are Real! I Was Abducted!’**

_ Nah, I only really like the ones that involve you doing some laborious mental gymnastics. More fun to watch. _

**What on earth could be fun about watching me sitting and staring at a computer screen or listening to a buzzing radio station for endless hours and days, that sounds horrible and boring for both of us.**

_ One man’s boring is another man’s...I was trying to think of a word that rhymes with ‘boring’ but nothing’s coming to mind. _

**‘Snoring’? ‘Loring’? ‘Flooring’? Yeah none of those really work, good try though, Phil. This is why you aren’t fated to solve any mysterious Russian puzzles.**

_ Maybe, I guess we’ll all just have to wait and see. Ooh, a cliffhanger! _

**Life is a cliffhanger, Phil. You can never know what to expect next.**

_ Wow, that’s deep. Is this the part of the podcast where you inject the moral? _

**I think ‘inject’ is probably not the word I want to use in the same podcast as a discussion about aliens and probing, but sure. Life is unpredictable, guys, so you never know what will happen next or how it’ll get better. Life is very long, there’s lots of time for it to improve.**

_ Aw, I like this, it’s like we’re at the end of a liveshow! Which, I guess, we kind of almost are. This is sort of like a liveshow, except, uh...not live. But you guys know what I mean. _

**Yes, Phil, yes we do. But we can’t end it just yet! Phil, did you bring any conspiracy theories for us to discuss?**

_ I did, actually! And you’ll never guess who it’s about. _

**Hit us, Phil.**

_ Me! I saw some people talking about this on Twitter, which is where I see most things that are totally true.  _

**You- okay, Phil. Of course. He’s got a theory about himself. From Twitter, which is definitely a factual website.**

_ Dan, do you - can you even remember me back when I had the fringe instead of the quiff? _

**No, Phil, we’ve talked about this, the shining forehead is all I remember now.**

_ Good, that’s the way it should be, really.  _

**What- what are you getting at, Phil. Is the quiff a conspiracy?**

_ Well, I guess that’s up to the people to decide. Some believe that Fringe Phil is still out there somewhere, and that you’ve just gone and replaced him with the quiffed version. _

**That’s, like, people think** **I** **went and replaced you- er, ‘Fringe Phil’ with a quiffed Phil?**

_ Yes! It’s not like I could just replace myself with myself!  _

**I mean, if Fringe Phil is still out there, surely he could’ve cloned himself and done this without any intervention on my part?**

_ It’s all very sinister, you must be involved somehow.  _

**Oh, just because it’s ‘sinister’, that means I did it. Angel bean AmazingPhil could** **never** **, is that it?**

_ That’s right. Poor Fringe Phil, I bet you’ve just got him shoved into a hole somewhere, don’t you?  _

**A- and where the hell would I just have a hole, Phil? We live in the middle of London, do you really think there’s even- where would I dig a hole? And do you really think- I mean, come on. I’m not going out of my way to do exercise.**

_ I don’t know, Dan, that sounds like a pretty flimsy excuse to me. Ooh, and what’s your motive? What happened to make you want to get rid of him? Am I really so much better? You can talk about how great I am, no one will mind. _

**My- it’s not** **murder** **, I didn’t- oh my god, Phil’s- I don’t think you guys understand, he’s like this...all the time. Literally. Maybe I should replace** **you** **with a clone. Or go find the Fringe Phil and bring him back, maybe he’ll be less arrogant. Actually, knowing you with a fringe, you weren’t really any less arrogant. Just had less forehead.**

_ Oi! Every version of me is an absolute delight, you know it, I know it, everyone knows it. Only facts on this podcast! _

**Facts. Yes, on the** **conspiracy theory podcast** **, we’re only talking facts, folks.**

_ Shut up. Anyway, tell us you favorite conspiracy theory in the comments below, and also give me some recommendations about where in London I should start looking for Fringe Phil.  _

**Right, yes, so if you see Phil with a shovel in the middle of the park, you’ll know what he’s up to. Apparently searching for his clone that I’ve mysteriously buried in a hole somewhere. Thanks for listening, I’m sorry for everything, and please subscribe!**

_ I’m not sorry. Bye! _

**Bye!**

**Author's Note:**

> leave your ideas for upcoming episodes in the comments below, or come talk to us on tumblr: [katie](https://knlalla.tumblr.com/) || [rose](https://uselessphillie.tumblr.com/)


End file.
